Bill and Kay Nikolakakos are reluctantly closing their the business they started as newlyweds, a cosy old diner with a loyal — and, now, crestfallen — clientele

Bill and Kay Nikolakakos have spent most of their adult lives cooking for, serving and enjoying the company of their devoted clientele. But changing times and the transformation of Highway 7 doomed their old-style diner, with its collection of souvenir plates from all over.

Kay and her husband, Bill, bought the place in 1969, when they were newly married in their 20s and expecting their first child. Specializing in gravy-soaked liver and onions, omelettes cooked in half-century-old pans and cabbage rolls that the regulars swear by, Pinecrest has attracted a loyal core of customers for decades, even as the world around it transformed.

“We were hoping to be here for a few more years, maybe pass it down,” says Kay, 65, leaning on the hazel-coloured countertop by the cash register while her husband attends to the crack and sizzle of the kitchen’s well-worn grill.

“During the week,” she explains, “it costs us money to stay open. We said, ‘We might as well close it with pride and people will remember us for a good thing.’”

There once wasn’t much near the restaurant, aside from empty fields and the roaring Pinecrest Speedway, Bill and Kay will tell you. The diner, which sits next to a motel just west of Keele St., was once fronted by a two-lane highway where drivers could pull over for a quick bite or a longer stay.

But now the creeping sprawl of the GTA, with its neatly designed residential enclaves, fast-food strip malls and the prospect of condos, has brought traffic jams and construction to their doorstep. With hunks of broken asphalt and a rusty sprinkler head piled in the ditch outside, fewer truckers and passersby drop in, the couple says.

It’s Monday afternoon and Bill is cooking up lunch for a few longtime Pinecrest frequenters. Steve Haskin, a one-time truck servicer who’s “always here,” puts it this way: “You can’t get in and you can’t get out … No wonder they’re having to close.”

The glass door to the restaurant clangs open to admit a bearded man named Alex O’Leary. Kay calls out his nickname — “Hi Gypsy!” — and O’Leary saunters over to a corner booth to sip a Diet Coke on ice.

“They’re the best people in the world, and I’m going to miss the cooking like crazy,” says O’Leary. He can remember coming to see Bill and Kay as a kid, when small change bought a carton of cigarettes and the nearby Speedway was still in full swing.

Back in those days, Kay says, she and Bill would take three buses from their home at Dufferin and St. Clair, then walk the final stretch to get to their restaurant each morning. Bill, who turned 70 this year, remembers when he could see cows grazing on the other side of the highway.

“He was a young boy then,” he says with a nod to O’Leary.

“So were you,” Kay quips.

The eatery maintains an air from another time, with a caramel-brown decor that lends a hushed hue to the dining room, lined with commemorative plates of saints and far-off places — the dozens of gifts that Pinecrest patrons have made a tradition of giving to Bill and Kay.

She looks at them now; they each have a story. There’s the first one from a Newfoundlander who used to eat here all the time; the ones that truckers brought from places like Texas, Florida, Mexico and B.C.; another from the couple — “so in love” — who visited while on a motorcycle trip, weeks before the newlywed wife was killed in an accident.

“Everybody’s asking me what I’m going to do with my plates,” Kay says. At first she thought of selling them and donating the money to charity, but realized they’re just too dear to her.

“I just couldn’t part with them,” she concedes. “I know where each one is and where it came from.”

Bruce Davenport, who works near the restaurant, has been eating lunch there for more than a decade. He gets up to pay for the soup and sandwich he just ate.

“You share a couple of stories, a couple of laughs, then you go back,” he says as he settles up with Kay. “More than the food, though,” he adds with a smile, “you become friends with ’em.”

That’s what Kay’s going to miss the most, now that she and Bill are reluctantly retiring to a life of gardening and grandchildren — the friendships. She stands behind the counter, where pots of coffee are kept warm and quiet conversation is punctuated by crescendos of laughter that fill the room.

Their restaurant has been like this for decades; it’ll be quiet and empty come Sunday.

Kay sighs.

“It’s an era. It’s an era that’s gone.”

More on thestar.com

We value respectful and thoughtful discussion. Readers are encouraged to flag comments that fail to meet the standards outlined in our
Community Code of Conduct.
For further information, including our legal guidelines, please see our full website
Terms and Conditions.